Not How It Works
by LividMeerkat
Summary: "Why did he do it? Why did he risk his life for someone who was already dead? Well, it was simple really. He did it because he couldn't live without her." Picks up from the end of Truth or Consequences and follows Team Gibbs throughout the season.
1. Couldn't Live Without You

**Okay, so I just realised I uploaded the wrong version of this chapter before. I'm fairly sure this is the proper one; there isn't too much different between the two versions. Just a heads up in case it bothers you, this includes some swearing (I'm Scottish, it's like it's built into my DNA). **

**Please let me know what you think of this (slightly anxious, type A university student over here, feedback is pretty much my whole life right now... _go to university, they said, it'll be fun, they said_) and thanks for reading. **

**Enjoy.**

:&:

**Couldn't Live Without You**

Very Special Agent Anthony D. DiNozzo Junior isn't scared of very much. As a child, the only things he could honestly claim to be afraid of were vampires _(he knew it was a bad idea to watch Dracula right before bed)_ and step-mother numero uno _(because she wasn't mom and she goddamn made sure he knew it)_. Since he entered adulthood _(though some __–__ most __–__ would argue that he's yet to make that step)_ those fears have been replaced by rats _(getting pneumonic plague'll do that to a guy)_ and Gibbs _(that cold stare could, and in fact has, intimidated even the most hardened of criminals)_. He doesn't think either of those are in any way irrational.

But right now all those pale in comparison to the fear the look in the woman's eyes sparks within him. The woman he has spent the last two months thinking was dead. She sits in front him an imitation of the person he once knew – the person who once jammed their gun against his chest, threatening to pull the trigger with such wrath and venom and genuine hatred he was momentarily worried she actually would. The _crazy_ person who had once voluntarily stayed behind to disarm a live bomb just to avoid losing evidence. The person who was once blown up while undercover in Morocco _(he wishes he could have seen her, pre-explosion, apparently her cover as a lounge singer had turned more than a few heads __–__ 'a dress so low you could see her tan line,' Abby had cheerily informed him with a wink, he didn't even bother asking how she knew)_ and didn't think to tell him. Just the tip of the iceberg that is Ziva David.

Once upon a time she had feelings in her eyes – light and teasing, dark and murderous, and everything in between. Now, there's nothing. It's like looking into two black holes – endless and haunting and utterly devoid of light. And nothing has terrified Tony as much – not when he was dying of Y Pestis _(he was younger then, carefree)_, not when he'd been framed for murder _(a worryingly regular occurrence come to think of it)_, not when he was being interrogated by Eli _Fucking_ David _(with a dad like that, it's almost a miracle Ziva grew up to be anywhere near as well adjusted as she did; funny, well-adjusted had never been high on the list of the most common adjectives used to describe her before)_.

At first he was confused when Saleem stomped out of the room only to return thirty seconds later with a new appendage – a figure clad in ragged, oversized khaki with a bag over their head. And then the bag was yanked off in one smooth movement and everything fell into place with one surprised gasp from the person in front of him.

_Ziva David is dead._

He had uttered those words a few hours ago _(was it hours? Or had it actually been days?)_ almost fully convinced they were the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God. But here she is, a few feet in front of him, alive and… not exactly well, but looking remarkably good for a corpse. Her hair, never out of place before _(Tony always loved her hair for reasons even he didn't really understand __–__he'd been with blondes, redheads, brunettes, girls who changed their hair colour every other week, and he could honestly say he'd never paid an awful amount of attention to their hair before - he just knew that when Ziva's hair was down and curly and free that it was gonna be a good day)_ is positively manic; wild curls hang limply down around her sharp cheekbones, he can see splotches of bruises under the layers of dirt on her face, a nasty slash across the bridge of her nose, and her features are far more pale and gaunt and downright _haunted_ than they had been that sunny day in Israel four months ago.

But she's alive.

And _god_, she's beautiful.

He stays silent until Saleem leaves them alone together _(them, and the possum-playing McGee; don't look at him like that, alright, it was the best way for McGee to be above suspicion, it wasn't even Tony's idea)_, tries not to let any emotion show on his face.

"Well," he says as soon as the heavy door slams shut, caught halfway between a sob and a relieved exhale that, if he were any more intoxicated would turn into a full blown, borderline hysterical laugh that would probably end with tears, "how was your summer?"

If this were a film, that would be one hell of a line. The audience would go wild for the reunion between the battered, heroic protagonist who had walked to the ends of the earth to get what he wanted and his tortured, damaged, damsel in distress love interest who had been through hell and back but still managed to look drop dead gorgeous.

But it's a movie for an audience of one and he's currently pretending to be unconscious so… All the world's a stage and Tony and Ziva are the only players.

_(That, and she never was the damsel type. He has no doubt that if their lives were made into an action flick - hopefully more Speed than Speed __2__: Cruise Control (c'mon 'Cruise Control'? Even for Keanu it was too much, and he'd been in that shitty Little Buddha movie) __–__ she would be the rugged, brooding, scarred protagonist with a stony, hidden heart of gold and he would be the much unwanted tag along… he only prays to every deity he's ever heard of to, _**_please make him more Marion Ravenwood than Willie Scott_**_; he doesn't be _**_want_**_ to be the screaming, wailing ingenue, if he's gotta play the chick at least make him the femme fatale who only occasionally gets herself kidnapped.)_

She fixes him with those newly dead eyes of hers and shakes her head. "Out of everyone who could have found me… it had to be you." Her voice is different, he notices in his drug induced haze, more stilted and less sure of the language it's speaking. Tony isn't sure if it's because she's not used to speaking English or because she's not used to speaking at all.

"You're welcome," he tries to smile. He wants to cry. Sure he… they _(Ziva is not and never has been his, and let's face it, she probably never will be)_ have Ziva back, but at what cost? Because he recognises that kind of off-kilter, zombified stare fixated on him.

He's seen it before.

He flashes back to a point in his life he thought he had long since locked away but hey, he never was great at compartmentalising. He'd been working a homicide case in Baltimore back in… what? 2000? He supposes it doesn't matter overly much… except it was part of the reason he had accepted the job at NCIS and upped stakes _again_ despite telling himself it would finally be the post, the state, he stayed in for more than two years.

Some self-entitled sicko was chaining women up in his basement, keeping them for up to a year at a time. Then… he let them go and only once the dregs of hope had started to filter back into their hearts and eyes, would he kill them. They'd found him in time to release his latest victim, a woman named Natasha Lewis, a thirty-five-year-old high school Biology teacher. She'd been there five and a half months.

_(It's the reason he finds it hard to enjoy the gritty, over dramatic cop shows. He can't stand the way they use people's suffering for entertainment purposes. _

_'This week on a brand-new Criminal Minds, some sad white boy with mommy issues goes around murdering beautiful women because he got rejected once years ago and he just can't get over it like every other person in existence. Oh, also, his mommy left his daddy and his dog died of cancer, see, isn't his life just so _**_tragic_**_. Will the heroes get there in time to save his latest victim - generic blonde haired, blue eyed actress #3 who looks more like a supermodel than the runaway, drug abusing, teen mom prostitute she's supposed to be __–__ or will she be brutally dismembered and made into chilli to be fed to the members of her own search party? Find out this Wednesday on CBS.' _

_Yeah, no thanks, not for him. He'll stick with the over-saturated, hammy violence, and glorious eighties-ness of Magnum and Rockford, thanks very much.)_

He remembers having to interview her, gently coaxing her statement out of her and thoroughly hating himself, and the rest of the male population, the entire time. She'd described in possibly the smallest voice ever how the man beat her every day, denied her food and water, raped her when she wouldn't submit to his demands and a dozen other things that still make Tony feel sick even ten years later. The bastard hadn't even confessed, had been determined to put her through the indignity of a trial.

He learned later that she committed suicide after her own personal devil was sentenced to a truly pathetic twenty years in prison thanks to a gung-ho, hotshot defence attorney and a bumbling prosecutor who was greener than green _(kid looked like he was barely outta law school, must've only been given the case 'cause they thought it'd be a slam dunk)_.

He can't let that happen to Ziva.

Desperate to draw some of the old her to the surface he says, "So, you glad to see me?"

"You should not have come," she says, avoiding answering the question outright.

Honestly, he's not sure he wants to know anyway. The last time they laid eyes on each other was on an airstrip in Israel not long after she had pressed the barrel of her gun against him. He'd killed her boyfriend and she had lost all trust in him. If he's honest, he's still a little hurt at how quickly she jumped the metaphorical ship. Sure, she may have been Mossad pretty much since birth but she'd been with them for four years, she knew them… knew _him_. And yet she thought he killed Michael Rivkin because he was _jealous_?_ (He _**_was_**_ jealous, obviously, but in the heat of the moment the _**_very sharp shard of glass_**_ in the drunk Mossad assassin's hand had been the driving force behind his actions.)_ But all that can wait until they're out of here, until he knows she'll be alright. Until feeling angry won't make him feel quite so guilty.

"Alright then," he says, falling back on his usual method for coping with serious situations: a failed and very misplaced attempt at humour. "Good catching up. I'll be going now," he makes a move as if to stand and is immediately pulled back down. _Comedic timing at its finest, suck it Chaplin._ "Oh yeah, I forgot," he continues, voice dripping with heavy sarcasm, "taken prisoner." He had hoped to get a rise out of the _(former?)_ Mossad officer. All it elicits is a weary sigh.

"Are you alright, McGee?" She asks, though those deep-set brown eyes of hers don't leave Tony's face. Of course, trust her to know there's another person in the room even though he's barely made a sound. Her words cause guilt to ripple through Tony – from the moment the sack had been whipped off his supposedly dead partner's head, he'd sort of forgotten about McGee. He may have been faking unconsciousness in front of Saleem but that cut on his head, those kicks to the abdomen, they were very real, and they looked like they hurt like hell.

"I'm just glad you're alive," the man says, his own emotion badly suppressed. Tony decides not to give him too hard of a time over it. _(For now. They get outta here alive and it's fair game as far as he's concerned.)_

"You thought I was dead?" She asks and while neither her face nor her eyes show it, for the first time Tony hears an actual emotion pass through her cracked, split lips – confusion, if he's as well versed in the language of Ziva as he thinks he is. What? Did she really think they wouldn't look into her suspicious lack of contact with anyone? Tony and Gibbs… fair enough. But McGee? Abby? Ducky? _(As far as he's aware the worst thing Ducky ever did to her was accidentally forget about one of their planned lunches last year and all it took to make it up to her was a cup of fancy tea and a homemade scone.)_

"Oh, yeah," he says and he really has to fight not to cry.

_(DiNozzo rule number six: DiNozzo men don't cry.)_

_There were no survivors._

Ziva David may have been some sort of Israeli assassin-spy-superhero-ninja in their eyes but it was a reminder that even she was human.

It's no secret Tony's a fan of all things cinema, he's watched more films than he can count and something he learned very quickly in life was that in the world of gritty action and unrealistic explosions, if there wasn't a body then the character wasn't dead. Simple as that. And more often than not, that very character would make a triumphant return in the third act, all guns blazing, just in time to bail the other characters out.

Real life doesn't quite work the same way, but still, there had always been a small part of him dedicated to believing that, until an actual body was produced, she was still alive. No body, no proof _(maybe he should make that DiNozzo rule number __23__)_. _(Hell, sometimes there _**_was_**_ a body and that still didn't mean shit __–__the hero or the heroine would make a miraculous recovery with little to no explanation __–__ if _**_Fornell_**_ of all people could do it then Ziva definitely could.)_ Even if that body was supposedly at the bottom of the ocean. He's fairly sure all of them, Gibbs included, had secretly been living in hope that there had been some horrific mistake. _(I didn't give her permission to die, Gibbs had said during one of their basement drinking sessions a few weeks ago, and if it wasn't Gibbs talking, Tony would have described him as being choked up.)_ But even as they were all thinking it… wishing it, none of them voicing it, all of them had accepted that this was a revenge mission, not a rescue.

"Then why are you here?" Her voice is filled with disbelief and it suddenly strikes Tony that she's here for a reason. She didn't just stumble into Saleem's camp in the middle of fucking nowhere, Somalia. No… someone sent her here and considering the last thing he heard was that she had gone back to Mossad _(bound by her obligation as a dutiful daughter, as a dutiful soldier __–__ in Eli David's eyes, Tony doubts there's any real distinction between the two)_ there's only one person Tony can think of who would give her this order. Eli David. He sent her here to her death and then didn't bother sending anyone to get her out again _(if _**_NCIS_**_, the agency no one's ever heard of, could spare the resources, __Mossad__, the infamous Israeli intelligence agency, easily could)_. Her own father left her for dead. _(David makes DiNozzo Senior look like Father of the Year material. What an achievement.)_

First Ari. Then Michael. Then Director Daddy Dearest.

_Three strikes and you're dead._

No wonder she has trust issues.

"Well," he grits out, twisting his neck, "McGee… McGee didn't think you were dead."

_There were no survivors._

"Tony," she says, sharp and serious and so not how he imagined her saying his name in this moment. "Why are you here?"

"Couldn't live without you, I guess," he chokes out, the filter between mind and mouth stolen from him not entirely by the makeshift truth serum pumping in his veins but by the sight of his dead partner sitting in front of him, very much alive. He aches to reach out a hand to touch her, run his thumb across her muddied cheek, maybe push back some of that messy hair, press his lips to hers. Do what he should've done a _long_ time ago.

"So you will die with me," she says with the most chillingly humourless half smile ever. "You should have left me alone."

She's speaking as if they aren't currently tied up in a terrorist camp. As if she hadn't spent months in this hellhole already. As if she wants to die.

"Okay, tried, couldn't," he spits out, hoping the truth cocktail wears off before he can say anything too embarrassing. "Listen, you should know, I've taken some kind of truth serum, so if there's any questions that you don't wanna know the answer to…"

_God, there's so many questions she could ask him right now…_

The Ziva he first met years ago wouldn't've hesitated to ask him something humiliating just for shits and giggles. But that Ziva hadn't spent three months in a terrorist camp. That Ziva had seen some shit, done some things that he wouldn't be able to comprehend, but prison… torture, it changes people. And that Ziva, while she'd inflicted torture without blinking, hadn't had it inflicted on her, not on this scale anyway. _(He really doesn't wanna think about what kind of training she'd have to undergo in order to be able to hold out for so long; he'd almost cracked up after half a day in a jail cell, a perfectly average, non-torture-y, American jail cell.)_

"I did not ask for anyone to put themselves in harm's way for me. I do not deserve it."

Her words inspire a different sort of anger within him. He wants to shake her shoulders, yell at her to fight for _fuck's sake_ because she's _not_ dead, she's _alive_ and she's _here_ and _they are going to be okay_. Because _they have to be_. _He can't live without her, he guesses._ He's good at making her angry, always has been and anger is a much better look on her than defeat.

"So what are you doing out here, some kind of monastic experience? Doing penance?"

"It is justified," she nods, as if he'd asked a serious question.

"Get over yourself," the words fall from his mouth before he can even try to stop them.

"I have," she smiles the emotionless smile again. "Now you tell Saleem everything he wants to hear, and you try to save yourselves. I am ready to die." And just like that his breath is gone and it's up to McGee to answer in his place.

"That's not how it works," McGee, bless him, groans from the floor.

"How what works?"

"The plan."

"You have an escape plan?" She asks.

He shoots her his best Indiana Jones crooked smirk in reply, winking and clicking his tongue. Maybe if he tries to act like a suave, debonair action guy who always saves the day and the girl _(I think what Agent DiNozzo means is that the Transporter would have gotten the case, gotten the girl, and still have held on to his cappuccino)_ he'll actually start to feel like it.

"Tony… they have thirty men, heavily armed. They have anti-tank and anti-plane weapons. What do you have?"

_Well, sweet cheeks, as it happens I got a whole freakin' army outside these walls ready to move on my signal. It's fool-proof baby._

That's what he wants to be able to tell her but she's never been one for false hope so all he can manage is a slightly weak, "Well, that's where things get a little tricky."

He tells her about how they found out about the camp, the initial apparent shutdown of their plan by Vance, the sneaky, roundabout Gibbsian tactics and lastly, McGee and himself deliberately driving right into the outskirts with a fairly good idea of what they were getting themselves into.

He doesn't tell her about Abby's reaction – a combination of anger and sadness when they explained the plan to her, how tightly she hugged them as she begged them to make it back alright. She couldn't take losing another one of them, she had said. He doesn't tell her that McGee didn't even tell his sister what he was doing because she would only try to stop him going on what was potentially a suicide mission. And he _definitely_ doesn't tell her that a part of him had hoped he wouldn't get out alive. That before he'd left he'd altered his will – splitting things between his team, the few family members he still spoke to, and various charities his mother had donated to all her life _(not that there was really a massive amount to split)_.

_Couldn't live without you, I guess._ More than just a line, more than she probably knows. Probably more than he really knows, to be honest. Tony's never been good at knowing just how he feels or what he's lined up to lose until it's too late; it was the same with his mom _(yeah, she was a bit of an alcoholic and yeah, she was kinda messed up, but she loved him and he loved their trips to the cinema in town… she was the first woman to break his heart)_ and with Jeanne _(he really had loved her, you know, only properly realised how much when it was gone; whenever he caught a snippet of classic French cinema on his TV; whenever he had to drive past the hospital she used to work at (word is that she's back with Doctors Without Borders, hey, who knows? She could be in Somalia right now too); he can't even tell a lie without his brain conjuring up images of the woman he had lied to more than anyone else)_, even with Kate to an extent _(not that he would've admitted it to her while she was alive, but he's sure now that he'd felt a certain sort of love for her, he's just not sure exactly what sort of love it had been - something not quite romantic but not quite platonic at the same time)_.

"Wait… you got captured on purpose?" She says it as if he's being particularly stupid. Who knows? Maybe he is.

**_Look at you, Junior, getting yourself killed over some damn girl. I thought I raised you better._**

_You barely raised me at all. Guess you've got mom and all the various housekeepers to thank for this._

"Yeah."

"These men are killers, Tony."

"I know. That's why we have to stay alive long enough to not get dead." And as rousing speeches go, he reckons it's up there with some of the all-time greats. He's Gibson in Braveheart. He's Butler in 300. Crowe in Gladiator. Stallone in Rocky. Hanks in Toy Story _(what? It's a classic)_.

"That would involve being rescued." It's how she says the word 'rescued' that gets him because it's crystal clear from her tone that she was well aware rescue wasn't on the cards. That she'd long since resigned herself to a lifetime of being disposable, to being another casualty in a senseless war. A war that's already claimed her mother, sister, brother, and in a way, her father too.

"Yes, it would."

"How long will it take?"

"I don't know. How long d'you think I've been talking?"

_(He vaguely recalls day turning to night and back again, sweltering heat turning to slightly more manageable heat, the dry burning of a throat deprived of water. He isn't sure what's real and what's not. If he comes to his senses and discovers this is all a twisted fever dream he'll either cry or murder someone.)_

"What's the plan?" Rushed out, knowing Saleem could come back any second, and showing signs of actual life again. A spark of hope illuminates in her eyes and God, this really is far too much like Baltimore.

"Oh, well… we fail to contact Dubai, words gets to the carrier in the Med and they scramble F-2 Raptors that burn sand into glass. How long's it gonna take, I don't know. Hours or… days. Ziva, can you fight?" The resulting expression that crosses her face is answer enough, even if she can't bring herself to voice it. He diverts his gaze slightly so he can plausibly deny seeing the single tear crawling down her cheek that she's unable to wipe away. It's almost like this is her just realising that _no, she can't fight_. For the first time in her life there's absolutely nothing she can bring to the situation.

If his hands weren't literally tied, he'd Gibbs slap himself.

_'Can you fight?' What kinda dumbass question is that, DiNozzo? She looks like she can't stand up let alone throw a punch._

"Oh, hey, Saleem," he says, alerted by the heavy creaking of the door opening and the sounds of gunfire bursting from outside. He's almost grateful for the distraction. "What's up, man? What's the commotion?"

"We're moving out."

_Lights. Camera. Action._

_Showtime._

"Oh, well, that's good. I was gettin' kinda tired of this place."

"We're not taking prisoners."

"Oh, well, okay, it was nice talking with you."

"No, we're not done yet." Saleem brandishes a knife, it's at least three times larger than the blade he knows Ziva usually carries with her at all times.

_(The insane, drug fuelled thought of: 'that's not a knife... _**_that's_**_ a knife' briefly enters his head.)_

_Rule number nine: Always carry a knife._

"If they do not check in, their people will come looking for them," Ziva says breathlessly, the pulse point in her neck jumping erratically, and Tony knows what she's saying. She wants to die, he realises, she isn't just saying this to stop Saleem murdering himself and McSleepy over there. She wants to die. Ziva David, perpetual fighter and very scary person, wants to die. And snap. Like that he has a new worst fear.

"Ziva," he warns, "shut up."

"Kill me," she says outright, her voice commanding Saleem to get on with it already. She's been suffering for months, at least make her death swift.

And he does.

In one quick slice there's a red Cheshire Cate smile painted into her neck, blood spraying out like a fountain – crimson red splashing across pale canvas. A gurgling sound echoes from the hollow of her throat for a few seconds before she goes utterly silent. Tony yells, a shout of absolute desperation as she slumps forwards in slow motion, sending blood soaking into his pants. He doesn't notice. He's spent the last two months thinking she was dead only to find she'd been alive the entire time. And now she actually _is _gone… They got within five minutes of all getting out alive. _(See, DiNozzo, this is why you should just let sleeping dogs lie: ignorance is bliss, false hope and all that meaningless shit, all idioms that Ziva would mangle within an inch of their lives.)_ Tony jerks in his chair, trying and failing to break out of his bonds to race forwards and lay the ultimate beatdown on the smug terrorist; from the look on the guy's face you'd've thought he'd managed to score a date with Angelina Jolie or something, instead he'd sliced a woman's throat open.

_You know, just another day at the office. _

_"What did you do at work today, honey?" _

_"Oh you know, just the usual, did the paperwork, made the lunch run, played some paper basketball, strapped a bomb to a kid who wasn't even old enough to drive, tortured a girl half to death. Nothing out of the ordinary."_

_"Sounds great, sweetie, would you like some more meatloaf?"_

_Was that a typical after-work conversation for this guy?_

"Tony."

He struggles harder as Saleem advances, twirling his machete like a Bond villain of old. In fact, he reminds Tony strongly of Dr. No, he's got that whole _evil academic_ thing goin' on. With that in mind, Tony's obviously Bond _(gotta be Connery for him, guy was so good he made the actual Bond creator change the character's backstory, albeit Tony would like to think he's a bit less misogynistic; if he was entirely like Connery's Bond then, with the women currently in his life, he'd probably end up chemically castrated within days)_, McGee has to be Q _(_**_McQ_**_, his brain supplies as if it's a helpful contribution to the situation)_, and, as he once mentioned to McGee, he always saw Ziva as Tatiana Romanova, the sexy Russian spy in From Russia With Love, or maybe Xenia Onatopp, the well-muscled Georgian Soviet with a fondness for crushing men to death with her thighs _(mmm... now there's a way to die, Famke Jansson's legs wrapped around your neck… much less pathetic than dying tied to a chair in a terrorist camp that you shouldn't really be in in the first place)_. He supposes that makes Gibbs M or maybe he's Bond in his own right and Tony's the helpless schmuck Bond's sent in to rescue… Yeah, that sounds about right. Gibbs is the last action hero and Tony's the freakin' kindergarten cop _(he really doesn't want his last coherent thoughts to be about the governor of California, no matter how much this whole thing is like True Lies)_.

"As for you, American, I will make sure your death is much, much slower." Christ, he even _talks_ like a Bond villain. Difference is Bond villains rarely succeeded, this guy's already killed the Bond girl _(Ziva would _**_kill_**_ him if she knew he had ever referred to her as a Bond girl)_ and is within minutes of finishing off Bond himself.

Tony spits out every curse he even vaguely knows – English, Spanish, Italian, a couple of clumsy French phrases the dead woman had laughed at in another lifetime _(Your pronunciation is terrible, Tony. You would stick out like a sore hand)_, and a few choice Hebrew words she liked to teach him over post-case drinks, her eyes bright, dancing with warmth and her cheeks red thanks to copious amounts of alcohol. _(She was always so _**_alive_**_, and even though her body's right in front of him this time, part of him's still convinced this is all a show. The most masterful twist he's seen since Memento. Hey, if anyone could convincingly fake their own death in an elaborate, unnecessary way and have absolutely everyone believing they were actually dead, it was Ziva. Knowing her she probably has a contingency plan in place at all times. She's _**_that_**_ level of crazily prepared.)_ He calls Saleem every name under the sun and it isn't enough. He needs to feel the man's pulse slow beneath his fingers, needs to watch the light leave his eyes, needs to paint the walls red with his blood, needs to deliver the truest form of payback.

"Tony," it's McGee's voice. How the hell is he so calm? Ziva is sitting there, dead, blood flooding the floor and Tony had no idea the human body held quite so much of the stuff. It's suffocating. The thick, coppery smell is so heavy in the air it's almost tangible. It crawls up his nostrils and settles sickeningly in the back of his throat – metallic and salty – choking him, drowning him.

Saleem smiles, casually wiping the blade on his pants as he advances on the still-fighting Tony.

"Yes, she always was entertaining," he comments idly, as if this was just some sort of sick game that's been keeping him amused these last few months, "at the beginning she was so…" he trails off, "lively," he decides on, the smirk on his face is truly disturbing. "But everyone has a breaking point… after that," he grabs a handful of her hair and twists her head up so Tony can see the jagged, bloody wound stretching from ear to ear in a sick grin, "she wasn't nearly as much fun. She didn't even bother to fight back," he adds with a lecherous smile that could only mean one thing as he lets go. Ziva's head lolls brokenly forwards, a marionette without strings.

Tony wants to throw up as tears both angry and devastated sting his eyes _(DiNozzo men don't cry)_, he rocks so violently in his chair that he topples backwards, his head bouncing off the floor like a soccer ball. He's like a turtle stuck on its back and no matter how hard he tries, he can't flip himself the right way up.

"Tony," Ziva's voice speaking to him from beyond the grave.

_I'm sorry, sweetcheeks_, he thinks as Saleem looms over him menacingly, _I got you killed_.

_I love you. I know, shitty timing, right? And I didn't even plan on it, why's that always happening to me? In fact, I really wanted to hate you at first. For Ari, for what he did to Kate. You wanted him kept alive, I didn't. And then you had to go and tell me about your sister, I hated that I didn't have it in me to hate you after that. It made you too human to hate __–__meant you were grieving too. Course, you probably knew that, counted on it even._

_I'm gonna die and right now I couldn't care less. I really can't live without you, I guess._

For all intents and purposes, Ziva David was both an incredibly easy and an incredibly difficult person to love. She was fire and ice wrapped in boots and cargo pants, and dresses that caught the eye of everyone in the room, and, occasionally, nothing at all. She was innuendo and tease with a mountain of issues. He could come up with an alphabet of words to describe his partner and still not be done. Not all the words would be flattering or complimentary _(she's hot-headed, secretive, stubborn beyond belief, occasionally manipulative in that way where you're not even sure you're being manipulated until she's finished with you, and she doesn't trust anyone; not to mention she's a lunch-thief, yep, that's right, she committed the most cardinal of sins - she stole Tony's meatball sub once, no excuses, she just straight up stole it; it had taken him a week and a replacement sandwich for him to forgive her) _but he wouldn't have it any other way; it shows that despite all her super-secret Mossad training she's still human.

Was. She _was _human.

He tries to choke back his tears, a horrible, guttural noise wrenching free from his chest, animalistic and raw.

"Any last words?" Saleem asks, raising the knife. Tony just glares at him venomously, he won't give him the satisfaction now. "Ah well, you will be with her soon, eh? Well…" he smiles, showing off teeth reddened by vast quantities of Caf-Pow, "not too soon. That would be too easy, yes?"

Tony can't say this is how he planned to go out; he always figured he'd go out in a hail of bullets, sacrificing himself for one of his useless teammates but, hey, as ol' blue eyes sang _that's life_ and by God, _no one could say Tony DiNozzo didn't do it his way (he faced it all and he stood tall; he loved, he laughed and he cried and he's had more than his fair share of losing… he did it his way, right until the end)_. Each jab and twist of the knife (both real and metaphorical) is more painful than the last.

"I'm sorry, Ziva," he whispers. _And yes_, he thinks, _those are very appropriate last words_.

"DiNozzo!" Gibbs's voice.

He jerks, the restraints prove to no longer be an issue, he's stronger than ever before. He bolts up into a sitting position far too fast if the pounding in his head and the roiling in the pit of his stomach is anything to go by. He leans over, emptying his stomach of the little contents it has.

"That's it," says a gruff voice, thumping his shoulder with unnecessary force, "get it all out."

Tony slumps back, shaking and covered in a cold sweat. He's in a semi-dark room lying on a lumpy cot that can't be good for his back. That's right, he's in the med centre they were taken to a few miles outside Mogadishu. It's your standard temporary army base job but they have supplies and canvas cots. All in all it's a good enough placeholder until they get home, so Tony thinks it was probably worth delaying their return; even if he had been denied access to the heavy duty pills he longed for due to the pharmacy already swarming his blood stream. Gibbs had insisted they all get checked over and cleared in addition to a night's sleep before their long trip back to America. He's alive, McGee's alive, Ziva's…

"Ziva?" He croaks out, panicky, looking at the silver haired man sitting on the far end of the cot.

"Right over there," Gibbs says, indicating a cot nearer the entrance of the tent. If he squints he can just about make out a squirming figure in the low light. Her breathing is utterly silent, there's none of the chainsaw-like snoring he became accustomed to after one too many late-night stakeouts – like the world's most irritating white noise machine. It seems stupid, but it actually makes him angry; it's another thing Saleem and his terrorist buddies took from her. He still relaxes minutely though, she's alive. It was all a dream… mostly… it was mostly a dream. A horrible, twisted dream that he'll no doubt be experiencing a lot in the weeks to come. "She's gonna be fine."

_Is she?_

Tony remembers how she looked as Saleem ripped the bag from over her head, her lack of… well, anything as he and McGee dragged her weakened body out of there. The silence from her during the chopper ride, the way she had stared unblinkingly at the sand speckled floor as if she were seeing something else entirely.

None of that sounds fine to him. None of that sounds like _Ziva_ to him.

"She woken up yet?" After they'd all been checked over _(separately, much to his annoyance, he wanted to know how she was, damn it)_ she'd dragged herself over to the furthest away cot and dropped off to sleep before anyone could say anything. Worrying him further had been when one of the doctors had gone over and hooked her up to an IV without waking her up, he had watched, cringingly, as they slid the needle into her bonelessly limp arm. She was still passed out when the IV was removed hours later.

"Mhmm," his boss confirms, fixing him with a look he can't interpret, "'bout an hour ago. Got her to eat something."

Tony breathes a sigh of relief, trying to stop his teeth from chattering as a feverish chill sweeps over him. This can't be good for his lungs. It's beginning to feel like some real Requiem for a Dream shit and it so isn't what he signed up for. Torture and interrogation, he figured that was par for the course, the possibility of death, a given, but this… hell no. Ever since he had the plague he's been wary about needles and fevers and sickness, worried that something might trigger a relapse and while this isn't on the same level, it still brings back a whole load of unwanted memories. _(An envelope _**_obviously_**_ meant for him; a humorous shower conversation overshadowed by words he never, ever wanted to hear; Kate, with her runny nose, bloodshot eyes and constant sneezing somehow not getting infected and yet risking herself by sticking with him anyway, she was a better friend to him in that moment than he had been to her throughout the whole of their short-lived partnership. Did he ever thank her? He hopes he did, can't stand the thought of her having died thinking he was an ungrateful bastard who didn't care about her or worse, that he was nothing more than a sex-obsessed overgrown frat boy who just wanted to sleep with her.)_

"Here," Gibbs says, placing something thick in Tony's arms, he thinks he can make out the glinting of a zip and a desert sand camouflage pattern, "the Doc says the serum's wearin' off. Apparently it's one hell of a come down." Tony slips the jacket on appreciatively, his shaking hands fumbling with the zip.

"No kiddin', boss," he replies with another full body shiver. "How did you-?" _How did you know I was having a nightmare?_

Gibbs, being the mind reader that he is, gently cuts Tony off. "You were talkin' in your sleep, DiNozzo." _Oh crap, what the hell did he say? Given what he'd been dreaming about, none of it could've been good._ "No need to be embarrassed, we all have 'em," says Gibbs, either misreading his silence, or, more likely, letting him off the hook.

"Thanks, boss."

"Get back to sleep."

He doesn't need to be told twice.


	2. Let's Go Home

**Here's chapter two, I'm not really sure if I like this or not, but here it is anyway. In case you missed it, chapter one was updated with the correct version so go check that out if you haven't already.  
**

**Hope you like this, if you do, please leave a comment or a like letting me know. **

**Thanks for reading.**

**:&:**

**Let's Go Home**

Special Agent Leroy Jethro Gibbs watches as stoically as he can as DiNozzo slumps back over, still shaking in his oversized jacket. There's a few moments of rattling breaths and chattering teeth _(a kiss stained envelope, decontamination shower conversations about honey dust, and the plague with a fifteen percent survival rate)_ before the rumbling snores fill the tent again.

It's hard to watch but at least he seems to be at peace for now. He'd been talking earlier in addition to the snores – a lot of it had involved the words 'Ziva', 'sorry', and 'dead' though Gibbs is positive he also heard the words 'I', 'love', and 'you'. He's not going to concern himself with that yet, his blood pressure's high enough as it is without having to worry even more about his Senior Field Agent and former Mossad Liaison Officer. For now, the breaking of rule twelve is fairly low down on the list of things to watch out for. They're alive, that's what he needs to concentrate on.

Of the other two patients, McGee, with his twisted knee and concussion so mild he doesn't even need waking every few hours, sleeps soundly with a small smile on his dreaming face. Unlike DiNozzo he's still at the '_thank God she's alive_' stage, which Tony seemed to have moved over the moment he saw her, steaming dead ahead onto guilt. It doesn't surprise Gibbs; for reasons unknown all three of his agents have a tendency to blame themselves for things out of their control _(though, really, isn't he the same? _**_Damn kids_**_)_.

The second patient sleeps too, much more restless than her partners. Even in sleep she's twitchier than the Energizer Bunny on speed _(or Abby after twelve Caf-Pows)_ and every so often jumbled words slip from her lips – Gibbs isn't sure if it's Hebrew or just gibberish, either way it sure as hell isn't English. Nevertheless he quite likes the sound, it lets him know for sure that she's still breathing. _It's not something he'll ever take for granted again._

He crosses the tent, kneeling next to her as he takes her in; anger mixed with relief bubbling in his stomach. He'd come to think of her as a daughter at some point across the years and no amount of anger or perceived betrayal could erase that. That's what fathers do, isn't it? You can hate your kid for their own stupidity, but nothing will ever change how much you care about them. Your kid screws up, they learn their lesson, and everything moves on and goes back to how it was. Except her screw up had led to _this_. As kids grow up, screw ups usually come in three distinct forms - half an hour on the naughty step, detention, and the gentle suggestion that _maybe you should take some time off, I think you're a bit stressed. _Her screw up has brought her to a canvas cot in Somalia, battered and bruised and beyond hurt, trapped in a nightmare he can't even imagine.

_Aw hell, Ziva._

He's caught somewhere between anger and wanting to pull her into the sort of hug usually only given to and by Abby.

She twists again, her face burying further into her thin pillow and this time he can make out a few distinct words. "Abba…" she whispers, closer to a whimper really, her hand tightening its grip around the edge of the cot. She chokes out a word that sounds like, "Ani," and then a word he doesn't know beginning with 'M', followed up with another, "… Abba…" He doesn't have to speak a lick of Hebrew to understand what she's saying, her face tells him everything he needs to know. She's apologising to him. Apologising to the man who sent her into a death trap and didn't bother getting her out again.

To Gibbs's horror he thinks he can see a tear force its way out of her closed left eye to trickle aimlessly across her nose and down the other side of her face.

_He never did like Eli David. Manipulative bastard. _

"Ziva," he murmurs, reaching out a gentle hand to rest on her shoulder. From somewhere she manages to find the strength to twist it at what could almost be classified as an impossible angle. He vaguely recalls doing the same thing to her once, when he had no real memory beyond Shannon and Kelly's deaths. When he was half asleep and disoriented with zero recognition of his team. She'd snapped him out of then, hopefully he can do the same now _(without having to slap her across the back of the head, because for some reason, he doesn't think his go-to method would help much in this situation)_.

"Ziver," he says, the fond little nickname only he uses and immediately she drops his hand, comprehension dawning on her bruised face.

"Gibbs," she sighs, relaxing, her eyes looking almost black in the early morning light. He looks away as she surreptitiously swipes at her eyes and cheeks.

"Here," he hands her a canteen of water, "drink." She eyes the offered bottle warily but thirst trumps anything else so she takes the water, gulping it down so fast he's worried this is going to end with him holding her hair back as the earlier never-to-be-mentioned-again incident with the granola bars had. _(Turns out not eating much for the last three and a half months shrinks your stomach to the size of a walnut… he'll definitely remember that next time he decides to go against doctor's orders. "Only liquid for the next __24__," they'd said, and as usual Gibbs had thought he'd known better. Turns out, he really didn't.)_

Dehydration. Just one of the things on the worryingly long list of ailments. At her insistence _(insistence in this case meaning she grabbed hold of his wrist and shook her head desperately when he made to leave)_ he'd been there when the doctors were checking her over earlier.

Starvation, broken ribs, bruises and cuts and burns in various stages of healing, a fractured eye socket along with a broken nose. Her eye and her nose had apparently healed quite well so Saleem must have had some sort of medic patch her up occasionally; obviously it wouldn't do to have her die _too_ quickly. It makes him remember the case they had earlier in the year involving Ducky and a sadistic bastard who went by the nickname _Mr Pain_ _(as if he was an extra from a Tarantino movie)_. Clearly no one offered her a way out because judging by the state she's in, she would've taken it in a heartbeat.

"Toda," she says, handing him back the empty canteen, her unfocussed, liquid dark eyes meet his directly for the first time, "Abba." She sort of mumbles a few more words – definitely Hebrew this time – he can make out the names 'Tali' and 'Ari' but nothing else. And then she's out like a light, dark lashes stark against her pale skin. For a moment he's frozen. He knows she's on a _lot_ of painkillers, despite her initial resistance, but he doesn't know if she thinks he's Eli or if she genuinely thinks he, Leroy Jethro Gibbs, is her father. _(He hopes it's the latter.)_

"G'night, kid," he whispers, placing a kiss to her forehead and standing up with creaky joints. He should try to get some sleep himself but he's far too wired – a combination of the coffee he's been mainlining and the adrenaline still coursing through him. He pulls out his phone; it's just after zero six hundred hours local time. What does that make it in Washington? He needs to call Vance, probably should call Abby and Ducky too, let them know that they're all okay and they're coming back with an extra person. He sighs, finishes off his lukewarm coffee and ducks out of the tent, grabbing the sat-phone as he does.

He paces as he raises the ringing phone to his ear, his inability to keep still having nothing to do with his constant caffeine consumption.

"Vance." The answer tells Gibbs that not only had Vance not been asleep but he hadn't left the office either. He stays silent, waiting for Vance to ask the question he must be dying to know the answer to. "Everyone alright?"

"Yeah."

"And Saleem?"

"Dead."

"Okay, Gibbs," Vance sighs, clearly already sick of his monosyllabic answers, "I'll bite. What aren't you telling me?"

"Ziva's alive."

He hears the other end of the phone go quiet and he starts to wonder whether Leon's hung up before he hears, "Have you told Eli yet?"

"Nope. And I don't think we should."

"He's her father, Gibbs," it's said casually as if they're discussing the weather rather than a man who left his own kid for dead.

"Yeah… yeah, he is, didn't seem to matter when he sent her out here to die."

Vance may be semi-friends with the Director of Mossad but he's also a father who cares about his kids a helluva lot more than Eli David ever loved his. He shouldn't need much convincing; when it comes down to it, Ziva's one of theirs. _(Sometimes he thinks DiNozzo's opinion about the navy being like the mafia - once you're in, there's no getting out - is more accurate than he'd like to admit.)_ Hell, more than that, she's a daughter wronged by her father. And he knows how seriously Vance looks down on that.

"Gibbs, what does it say about the level of trust between NCIS and Mossad if I don't even call the man to tell him his daughter's alive?"

Honestly, he doesn't really care about keeping things friendly between the two agencies, not when one of them seems intent on screwing over the other. _(It's probably a good thing he's not the Director of NCIS. If he was America would probably end up at war with at least three different countries within weeks.)_

"Leon, what does it say about the level of trust between NCIS and Mossad if say, for example, the Director of Mossad was sending his men to kill NCIS resources on US soil?"

"I don't like this anymore than you do but having Mossad as an ally is preferable to making them an enemy. Trust me, that's not a fight you'd win."

"Oh, I dunno about that, Leon, you're assuming that Eli cares she's alive."

"You don't think he does?"

"I think he knew she was in trouble and I _know_ he didn't do anything to get her out of it. Kinda gives off a certain impression."

"What happened to your rules? Specifically the one about not getting personally involved."

Gibbs sighs. He knows on a surface level that Vance is right. If one of his agents even thought about suggesting something like that, they'd be given a month's work of paperwork duty as a punishment and a head slap so hard any further children of theirs would feel it. "Fine, just wait a few days, maybe a week or two, 'til everything's straightened out." He doesn't think that's too much to ask.

_Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free._

She came to the US in the jump seat of a C-130 knowing that there was an apartment, a job waiting for her, knowing that she wouldn't be instantly sent home the minute her foot touched foreign soil. He had once heard DiNozzo refer to her status as a 'weekend fun pass' _(as if he knew anything about it, he was at least two generations removed from Italy)_. And while he hadn't exactly been right _(they'd seen more than their fair share of racist, anti-Semitic suspects who had said things that would've earned them far more than a smack across the head if they hadn't been in custody)_, he hadn't exactly been wrong either. Ain't nothing fun about _this_.

Vance exhales heavily through his nose, exasperated and pissed off and no doubt wondering how all of Gibbs's ex-wives managed to put up with him _(how _**_Jenny_**_, who Leon knew to be relatively sane, despite how everything ended, managed to put up with him)_.

"He left her for dead, Leon. Imagine that was your kid." It's a low blow and he knows it but if there's one thing that could get NCIS's newest director to turn his back on protocol, it was his family. Family first. The way it should be. When it comes to family, it's all hands on deck _(Gibbs rule __#21__)_.

"Okay, okay. Have it your way. But when Eli David goes on the warpath, and we both know he _will_ go on the warpath, it's your neck on the line. We clear?"

Gibbs smirks and hangs up without another word. He punches in Abby's number.

"Gibbs!" The nervous squeal, as usual at a pitch only bats and dogs could hear, hits his ear seconds later. "Thank God, I was really starting to worry. You promised me you would call as soon as you got them outta there and it's been days… _days_, Gibbs. I can't believe you made them suffer for so long. I mean, I know Tony can be a pain in the ass but he was being _tortured_, Gibbs. And McGee, poor McGee. Please tell me they're alright because I swear if they're not… why aren't you saying anything?! Oh my God, they're dead, aren't they? Saleem killed them too and now you're gonna get yourself killed trying to avenge them and I'm never gonna see you again, am I? I can't-"

"Abs," he cuts off gently, "calm down. Everyone's fine."

"Why didn't you just say so?" He chuckles and shakes his head, squinting in the early morning light. "When will you be back? 'Cause I thought I could go out and get like a cake or something, one of those big chocolatey ones with the rainbow frosting, even Timmy couldn't say no to a slice of that, right?"

"Plane takes off in a few hours but I'd hold off on that for now."

"There's something else, isn't there? Gibbs, you better tell me what it is right now or I'm gonna-"

"We found Ziva."

"But her ship went down at sea, how did you-?"

"Ship went down, turns out she wasn't on it. She's alive, Abs. We got her."

A muffled sob. "She's alive." Two words, a quiet exhale, filled with nothing but relief and surprise and hope. Gibbs had been sure it was the sort of voice he would never hear from her again. Because the person Abby turned into after '_there were no survivors_' wasn't hopeful at all.

"Uh huh."

"How… how is she?"

Gibbs really isn't sure how to answer that one. "Tired, hurt… she'll need some time."

"Time," Abby repeats as if it's a foreign concept to her, as if it's completely unheard of that friendly faces and warm hugs aren't enough to automatically make things better. "I can do that, I think, for Ziva. Can I talk to her?"

He doesn't think Ziva's in a particularly chatty mood but if he thought that hearing Abby's voice would benefit her then he would wake her from sleep once more. But he doesn't.

"Sorry, Abs, she's sleeping. I think you should do the same." Knowing the world's perkiest goth, she probably hasn't slept for any real length of time since they left almost five days ago in case she accidentally slept through their call. Abby may be an insomniac fuelled by drinks so caffeinated they should be illegal _(and actually _**_are _**_in some states: after several dozen reported incidents, states such as North and South Carolina as well as Alaska and Michigan had elected to ban Caf-Pow back in __2007__)_ but even she needs some sleep.

"Wait… you _are_ bringing her home, aren't you?"

"That's the plan."

"She hasn't… she hasn't said anything about her dad or…?"

"Hasn't said anything, Abs." Apart from calling him dad and muttering a few sentences in broken Hebrew she _literally_ hasn't said anything. Even during the thorough exam the doctors gave her, she'd stayed silent; whenever she was asked a question her eyes would flick desperately to Gibbs, leaving him to answer as best he could. But Abby doesn't need to know that. "We'll all be home soon."

"Thank you, Gibbs," Abby says, her voice warm and he thinks she might be on the verge of tears. Happy tears, he hopes.

"No problem. Now, for the love of God, get to sleep."

He hears her stifle a yawn. "You should know that I'm hugging all of you in my mind right now. Nice and tight and I'm never letting go again."

He longs to be there to kiss her forehead, make sure she gets home safely, like dads do for their daughters, but he can't, all he can offer is the soft assurance that, "I'll see you soon, you can hug us in person."

"Could… could you tell Ziva that I said hi?"

It's small, minuscule even, and they both know it's not going to be anywhere near enough but he's not going to kick her anymore. "Course. Night, Abby."

"Night."

He sighs and drags a weary hand down his face, the temporary energy boost from the coffee mixed with the adrenaline had started to fade. Two down, one to go. He needs to warn Ducky that by the time they land, he'll have a new patient. A new, stubborn, _very_ unwilling to talk patient. Ducky takes longer to respond than both Vance and Abby put together and when he does it's apparent that he'd been asleep.

"Jethro?"

"Mornin', Duck."

"I assure you, Jethro, it's not morning."

"It is here," he shrugs, going to take a gulp of coffee before he remembers that he's fresh out. "Just callin' to make sure your shrink skills are still up to scratch."

"Are Timothy and Anthony alright?"

"Not for them."

"Surely not for-?"

"Nope, not for me either. Ziva."

"Good God. She's alive?" Gibbs stays silent. "Oh… I see. You know she won't be happy about this." It's not a question.

"Count on it. But eventually, when this catches up to her, she'll appreciate it."

"Talking from experience there are we, Jethro?"

He rolls his eyes. Ever since his friend found out about the deaths of his previously unknown first wife and only daughter _(only biological daughter)_ he's been trying to get him to open up more about his '_trauma'_. Gibbs is, to the surprise of no one, yet to give in.

"Just tell me you'll help her, no matter what she says or does."

"Well of course I'll do what I can but I'm not guaranteeing anything. As you well know, Miss David had always been the stubborn sort. Does that remind you of anyone? The saying like father, like daughter definitely comes to mind."

"Thanks, Duck. Sorry I woke you," he says in a 'this conversation is over' sort of voice, disregarding his friend's last statement.

"You should get some sleep yourself, you sound exhausted."

"I'll have time to sleep when I'm dead."

He hangs up and for the first time in months he allows himself to feel hopeful.

**:&:**

Again, nobody speaks but even so, the onslaught of noises – the slamming of doors, the revving engine, the incessant tap, tap, tap of Tony's foot – is too much for Ziva's ears. It is all too much. Only yesterday she had been sitting in her cell, waiting for death to finally claim her _(she had already lived longer than she ever thought she would)_ and now…

She does not know what she is now. She has no home – her apartment in DC had been blown up not long after Michael… and there is no way she is going back to Israel, back to her father. That rules out returning to Mossad so she supposes she can also classify herself as jobless. As for NCIS, she is not sure she is prepared to walk back to them with her tail between her legs, not after how she left things, after she more or less told them she did not trust them.

_Do _**_they _**_still trust _**_her_**_?_ She does not see how they possibly could. Trust is a two way… something. _(She does not have the patience for the irritating and non-sensical American idioms at the best of times. And exhausted and numb and with a cocktail of strong painkillers and antibiotics swimming in her veins, this is not the best of times for Ziva David.)_

Tony, McGee, and Gibbs may have come all the way out here but they only did it for what they thought was vengeance, they had not expected to find her alive.

_Would they have come if they had known the truth?_

She blinks back tears – tired and overly emotional – at the thought before immediately pulling herself together. _(She has not cried once during the whole of the last few months, she does not want to start now.)_

Her own personal rule number two: _Good soldiers do not cry._

Her father's words to her. A rule he had been imposing on her ever since she fell out of a tree and broke her wrist when she was five years old.

She'd been playing with Ari, he was older than her by almost twelve whole years, but she had been determined to be like her big brother. Her big brother who impressed their father more and more every day _(while Ziva saw him less and less every day)_, who seemed to know everything there was to know and who always had time for his little sisters – Ziva and Tali, five and two respectively at the time – despite the fact that they had different mothers.

She had been too small to reach the lowest branches of the tree a stone's throw from their back yard but even at five she'd been determined… stubborn. _She wishes she had half the fight in her now as she did then._ Ari had laughed as she jumped, her scrawny arms barely missing the branch each time. As she glared murderously up at him _(a look she had perfected before she could walk, inherited from her mother rather than her more physically imposing father)_ he told her it would not be long before she could join him in the upper branches. _('__**Have patience, Ziva, you do not need to rush things,**__' he had said, with all the wisdom and life experience a sixteen year old could possibly muster.)_ Even then though, she had been a master of manipulation. So, she decided to change tactics – she had flashed her brother the big, sad eyes that had even worked on Abba once or twice. Sighing and telling her to be very careful, he had climbed back down the tree to stand next to her, lifting her slowly so she could pull herself up. She had loved climbing trees, much preferring that to playing with dolls like other girls she knew _(much to her mother's annoyance __– __what started the day as a perfectly neat braid ended as curls tangled with leaves and twigs and, on more than one occasion, feathers)_, so she made quick work of scaling to the top.

Ari had been right behind her the whole way, in place to catch her should she have fallen, and as they sat together, watching clouds lazily drift by, it was almost as if everything was normal. As if he had not already been trained to kill in the most effective, occasionally brutal, ways possible, as if in a few short years, Ziva wouldn't be undergoing the same training. They were a normal sixteen-year-old, a normal five-year-old. A normal family with normal parents, a father who wasn't a fast-rising star within the ranks of Israel's intelligence agency.

And then it had been time to climb down – the sound of Ima calling them in for dinner alerting them to just how long they had been sitting there. It had been fine until a branch Ziva had been standing on snapped clean out from under her. It was not that high up really but at five she had not been able to anticipate the sudden shock of the earth cracking beneath her feet. She had hit the ground hard, unable to manipulate her body so as to come out unscathed. The whipping crack of her arm breaking had been sickening, perhaps more so than the white-hot pain she suddenly felt piercing through her limb.

She had done what any other small child would – she cried. Her gasping wails had brought Ari to her side in seconds, Ima and Abba _(who was home for the first time in months)_ running out of the house to see what had happened. Her mother had joined Ari, her hand stroking through Ziva's wild curls, whispering words of comfort to her crying daughter. Her father had stood stoically by the house, his arms crossed and his expression blank.

"Oh, Zivaleh," Ima had whispered, her thumb wiping away some of the tears making their way down Ziva's face. "Hush now, sweetheart."

_If only you could see me now, Mama. Would you still call me your sweetheart?_

Her mother and brother had helped her up, her cries sounding more like whimpers as she took in her father's unimpressed face _(as if she had failed a test she did not know she had been given)_.

"Now, now, Ziva. Good soldiers do not cry," he had said, walking over to them.

"She is not a soldier," Ari had spat, his sharp features, inherited from his own mother, darkening. "She is still a child, do not take that from her."

_Hindsight is __50__/__50 __so she knows now the words he wanted to say but couldn't bring himself to._

**_Do not take from her what you took from me._**

_Too late, Ari, too late. _

"She is my daughter, she was born a soldier. Isn't that right, Ziva?"

She had sniffled, looking from her mother, expression conflicted, to her father, waiting and expectant. "Yes, Papa," she whispered meekly, not wanting to anger him further. Even at five she had known it was not something to be done lightly.

He had refused to take them to the hospital until she stopped crying completely. Both Ari and Ima had argued with him, but he was an intimidating man and had stood his ground with scarcely a blink. Ziva had sat silently in the back seat, tears long since dried on her face, wondering why everyone was shouting and wishing desperately that they would stop.

She wonders now how she had not seen it before. She had always known, since before she was in the IDF at least, that she was disposable, that she would likely be dead before she could turn thirty, before she could fall in love and have children of her own. But she had always blindly thought that when it came dome to it her father's paternal side would win out. _(How foolish she was, she should have known Eli David did not possess a paternal side.)_

She wishes she could go back in time and warn her younger self that Eli David should not be trusted. That one day, a man named Leroy Jethro Gibbs would come along and show her what it was like to have a father that cared. That she should trust him with her life and that Michael Rivkin was nothing more than another pawn in Abba's elaborate game _(it would not surprise her if her father's old protégé had been selected to… get close to her specifically because he knew it would end with Rivkin dead)_. That Gibbs would save her life in more ways than one.

She turns to see Tony staring at her. It is definitely not the first time she has caught him doing that since they met except that this time he does not immediately look away when their eyes lock – electric green and haunted brown. He offers a small smile, she thinks it's supposed to be reassuring but it looks more like he's in intense pain.

He might well be. At first, Saleem had tried shooting her up with the stuff and she remembers the detoxing process all too well, the track marks puncturing her skin will not let her forget it. Those nights she spent on the floor of her cell alternating between shivering so violently she's surprised she did not bite through her own tongue and burning up with a fever that made her feel as if her organs were actually boiling within her without so much as a drop of water to get her through it.

She tries to return his 'smile', but her mouth moves all wrong like it's been shot up with a local anaesthetic, so she diverts her gaze to stare absently at her clasped hands, shaking in her lap. He reaches over, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder. At first she flinches slightly until she looks back up at him. His eyes are all soft and pleading and she knows this expression must have worked on plenty of women before her. Part of her wants to tell him not to touch her, that she does not like that anymore but she supposes it is nice to remind herself what a friendly hand feels like. _(For all the things he's said and done to her, she knows he would never physically try to harm her.)_ She'll have to get used to it at some point, she might as well start now.

She nods minutely to him, forcing her muscles to slowly relax underneath his touch; his hand feels more like a warm blanket than an anchor holding her down. His grip is weak, giving her leeway to simply shrug it off should she so choose. It is worlds away from Saleem's possessive hold. It should concern, perhaps even annoy her that he is being quite so gentle but it's exactly what she needs because those men back there, the only human _(if they could be called that)_ company she has had for the last three months, had been anything but. She sees his Adam's apple bob in his throat as he gives her shoulder a squeeze, runs his thumb in small circles so absently she isn't sure he's aware he's doing it. Yes, she supposes she could get used to this sort of thing again, provided that the hand is a familiar and a friendly one. And Tony is about as familiar as they come.

_Couldn't live without you, I guess._

She still doesn't speak and they still have much to discuss but it is a start, she thinks, taking in his tanned, lined, slightly bruised face. He looks _(taller? Hotter?)_ older, tireder than the last time she saw him but his eyes are the same… warm and inviting and… underneath everything, filled with an emotion she is not yet ready to give a name to. He looks happy. Exhausted and drained and very worried, but happy. It has been a while since she had a reason to be happy. She has almost forgotten what it feels like.

She catches Gibbs's eye in the rear-view mirror as she reluctantly takes her eyes off her former partner, part of worried that if she does, when she looks back, he will be gone.

_Maybe she can't live without him either._ And that is a truly terrifying, bone jerking realisation that makes her stomach clench and had there been anything in it, she is sure she would have thrown up again. She has never needed anybody before. Not like she needs him. She was _trained_ not to need anybody and if this isn't an indication of how far she has come, she does not know what is.

_(She almost misses the before-times. The times where she was empty, numb, untainted. Because she thinks her father may have been right about one thing._

_"__Emotions will get you killed, Ziva," he had told her after she made the age old mistake of getting too close to someone doomed to die.)_

She half expects Gibbs to say something – maybe a casual rule twelve reminder – but he just shakes his head, a small, sad smile on his face. She must look truly awful then, for Gibbs to be so… not Gibbs.

She wonders what he had been thinking all those months, what all of them had been thinking. She had thought about them a lot, there had not been much else to think about. Them, the cases she was missing, the DC weather she once loathed but in the blinding heat of the Somalian afternoon, she missed. But mostly just _them_.

Gibbs, who could headslap you one minute and be looking after you the next.

Tony, with his constant stream of movie references, the expression he wore when he corrected her English _(she had wondered if he knew she occasionally messed up on purpose so she could witness his reaction)_.

McGee, who always took Tony's teasing with a good-natured roll of his eyes and a sneaky retaliation of his own that Ziva always found amusing.

Abby, who had hated her at first _(more because of what she was not than what she was)_ but became one of her best friends, with her sneak attack hugs and her spiky collars _(the two weren't always a good mix, Ziva has lost count of the number of times she's woken up the next morning with a red welt on the side of her neck)_.

Ducky, with his comforting Scottish brogue and his long, rambling stories that no one ever seemed to pay much attention to. She wishes she had, telling herself that if, by some miracle, she ever saw him again, then she would listen avidly to every single story he told, even the ones she already knew off by heart.

The days were long and hot and the nights were longer and marginally cooler, her thoughts were the only things that got her through most of it; the only things that kept her mind off the abuse lingering in her bones. Under the circumstances though, it did not take long for her to spiral; all of her thoughts straying into the decidedly morbid.

_Would they ever find out what really happened to her?_

Would they spend the rest of their lives convinced she had waltzed back to Mossad, never contacting any of them again like the highly emotionless assassin she had once been?

Would Gibbs go to bark out instructions at her only to remember too late that she was gone?

How would Tony treat her replacement? Would he dole out headslaps and play the boss like he did with McGee? Or would he move on in a heartbeat?

Would Tim ever text her only to think she had cut him out of her life when he never received a reply?

Would Abby resurrect the mop that had a picture of her taped to it, perhaps imagining she would one day return, never knowing that her body was dumped somewhere in the Somalian sands without so much as a marker?

Would Ducky one day start a story with 'I once knew a girl from Israel…'? _(At least he wouldn't one day be presented with her body on the table as he once had with another dear friend.)_

Would there be another person sitting at her desk? Another woman? Someone else to tease Tony about having phone sex, someone else to gossip with Abby, someone else to look after Jethro the dog for McGee, someone else for Gibbs to slap, someone who had stories to rival Ducky's?

_Would they ever forgive her?_

In the present she wishes she could bring herself to ask that but her throat still feels like it's clogged with sand – sand so thick she can scarcely breathe – so she just clamps her lips together and tries not to cry.

_Good soldiers do not cry._

But she is not a good soldier. She was supposed to kill Saleem or die trying. She managed to do neither. She has turned her back on Israel, on Mossad, on her father. She has failed. But failing has never caused her to feel quite so… not alive because she currently feels so very dead, and not happy either because everything is still far too raw… The point is that she cannot bring herself to see this as a failure at all so maybe being a good soldier isn't all it's made out to be after all. _(How is she only just realising this?)_

"You need help?"

She startles, unaware that the car had stopped in the first place. McGee stands there by her open door, his face which was once boyish and chubby is thinner and angular as if it has been chiselled from stone. He looks more mature and utterly out of place. He should be back at NCIS monitoring things on his computer, spewing out techno-ramble only Abby could understand, not in the middle of the desert on what started out as a revenge mission.

_Oh, McGee._

Swallowing her guilt, she shakes her head mutely, barely suppressing the wince of sore muscles and throbbing bones as she climbs out. She briefly looks back into the vehicle before remembering that she did not bring anything with her; the only material possessions she still has are the baggy clothes she's drowning in, she does not even have the comforting presence of her Star of David around her neck – the necklace _(a representation of family rather than faith)_ long since lost in sand and dust.

She moves out of the way to allow him to close the door behind her, an arm cradling her ribs. She also does not protest, though she does tense, as Gibbs comes up from behind her to give her a hand onto the plane and this time she is not quite as successful at biting back the noise of pain _(far, far too close to a whimper for her liking)_ as various aches are jarred.

"Sorry, Ziver," he says so quietly that at first she's convinced she misheard him.

_Ziver._

The first time he had called her that, she had felt very confused indeed. Had he suddenly forgotten how to pronounce her name? Surely it was not that difficult. But when he had started to do it more often she realised that, no, he was not suffering from amnesia side effects _(as he had been when he accidentally called her 'Kate' that one time shortly after he got back)_, he was simply being affectionate. The same way he was when he called Abby 'Abs' or Ducky 'Duck' or when he called McGee and Tony by their given names. Her father did not believe in nicknames.

_Ziver._

She liked the way it sounded – softer, less harsh. Much like herself really. By the time he had adopted the odd little nickname she was not the same mindless killer she had once been. She had lost none of her skills, but she was more rational, more open to getting to know people.

Her father had hated it when he heard the name through the speaker of his office phone. He hadn't said a word but the shifting of his expression, the hardened question in his eyes had said it all.

_(The whole 'kiss for your father' routine had been as blatantly false and possessive as the rehearsed conversation she had heard him having with Vance the next day; nothing more than a reminder that _**_you are my daughter and you will obey me_**_.)_

It had made her like the nickname more.

"Rule six," she replies simply, her own voice croaky and raw. The dustwebs of months of disuse still have to be cleared away. As he lowers her onto one of the racks she sees him smile. It is not a smile she likes. He looks far too sad, too old, too defeated _(and call her childish but a part of Ziva had been almost positive that nothing of this world could defeat Gibbs)_.

"And what's rule nine?" He asks as if he's testing her.

"Knife. Always carry a knife," she whispers, hearing the words catch.

"Good to see you remember them," he says, pressing the handle of a knife into her hand _(giving a drugged up, sleep deprived, twitchy as all hell former assassin a knife… he really must be affected by this)_ and a kiss to her hairline.

_He's being nice. It's scary._

She almost wishes he would deliver a swift blow to the back of her head; maybe it would relieve some of the numbness, let her know that she is still capable of feeling.

'_Of course I remember them, they kept me sane_,' she wants to say but her throat hurts and her head aches so instead she nods, her grip on her new weapon tightening. She thinks he understands anyway, Gibbs always did seem to know what she was thinking before she herself did.


End file.
